Frank and Ernest by Thaves for April 25, 2010
April 24, 2010
April 26, 2010
Transcript:
Ernest says, "Hey, Frank, the supreme court ruled that corporate spending is a form of speech." Frank says, "If their spending is speech, they obviously have very little to say to me!"
The Justice Dept. lost its case when its attorney was asked if the current campaign finance law would allow the government to prevent the publishing of a book and he agreed that it could. That was enough to convince the Justices that they had to take a hard stand for liberty (not something they do too often these days).
As for the practice of attempting to shoe-horn all sorts of things under one article or another of the Bill of Rights, that stems from the contraction created by the decision to have a Bill of RIghts in the first place, which several Founding Fathers opposed.
Even thought the Bill is clear that there exist other, unspecified rights (9th and 10th Amendments), the act of enumerating some rights without defining rights in general has led to the current silliness of, for example, trying to define pole-dancing as free-speech rather than simply recognizing that you have countless rights limited only by the obligation not to violate the rights of others – and that includes pole-dancing.
As for corporations, their rights ARE rights as fully as are yours, Dear Reader. Nobody gains or loses rights by being (or not) part of one group or another. The rights of a corporation (or a union or a political party or the Cub Scouts) are the rights of everyone involved – no more, no less.